Entrepreneurial Publishing

Last week was a marathon of submissions with forty completed in the week. I have had one request for additional pages. Everything else has been either no or no news. This week I moved to the area of self- publishing that I prefer to call entrepreneurial publishing. I want to start by thanking the multitude of resources that have helped me navigate my way through the maze of self publishing.

Let me start by sharing a shapshot of today’s publishing world. Today's book market has three types of publishers. There is the traditional publisher who may publish a few titles a year or 100’s of titles a year. They are part of the world of agents, editors and all. They are part of advances and Hollywood deals and fame and fortune. Submissions is about knocking on their door and asking to be let in.

The other two branches are related but different. One is the vanity press and the other is entrepreneurial publishing or self-publishing service. Both of these sell to the author but in very different ways. The vanity press is set up to appear as a regular publisher. Their sales reps are called acquisition editors and they use lines like “not every book I see has what it takes but yours sure seems to and with some of our help we can get this on the shelves” and then begins a fee for service or a package deal. These firms often promise marketing help and various other after publishing services that many in the blogosphere claimed never appeared. They are clearly identifiable by the way they play on your vanity.

The entrepreneurial publishers simply flat out sell services. Their rates appear on their websites and they are open and up front about them. After looking at several and asking around I decided to go with Createspace a company related to Amazon. I didn’t decide it was the absolute best , I decided I had learned all I could without actually plunging in and starting to learn the ropes.

Now believe me if an agent or a publisher calls and says we would like to invite you into the world of traditional publishers I am there and they can send my advance check here. And the over two years I have spent knocking on their doors has been good because time and again I realized my story was not yet ready. I have worked hard to improve it. But what I like about entrepreneurial publishing is that I get to control everything about my book, from the look of the cover to the lay of the page. I like that.

Next blog: Details, costs and risks of the entrepreneurial adventure.